BOULDER — The University of Colorado Board of Regents says it will challenge an appellate ruling that the school violated state law with its ban of concealed weapons on campus.

But the 5-4 vote Friday morning to appeal to the state Supreme Court had less to do with guns than trying to protect the board’s authority, CU spokesman Ken McConnellogue said.

If the regents didn’t take a stand on this issue, “then the next time the regents’ authority is challenged in court on any issue, the first thing in any legal brief will be that they didn’t appeal this,” he said.

Still, it is difficult to tease out the issue of concealed weapons on campus, regent Stephen Ludwig said.

“Yes, it’s about board autonomy but the underlying issue can’t be ignored,” Ludwig said. “We know students experiment with sex, drugs and alcohol, and adding firearms into that mix is a horrifically bad idea. So I continue to support the ban.”

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, which brought the original lawsuit challenging a CU weapons ban that dates to 1970, will fight this appeal, said their lawyer, Jim Manley, of the Mountain States Legal Foundation.

“The regents are just tilting at windmills,” he said. “They lost definitively in the court of appeals, and there really is no reason to appeal except to waste the students’ tuition money.”

On April 15, the state appeals court ruled that CU had violated the state’s Concealed Carry Act, which allows those in possession of a concealed-carry permit to carry a firearm in any public place in Colorado, except for K-12 schools and a few other federal and public buildings.

In its appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court, CU will argue that “under the Colorado Constitution, regents are given the authority to govern the university,” McConnellogue said. “So when it comes to making decisions about the safety and learning environment of our campus, the regents are the governing authority.”

CU banned guns in 1970 but allowed students to keep weapons in campus police lockers. After the Concealed Carry Act was passed in 2003, CU regents asked then-Attorney General Ken Salazar whether the act applied to CU. Salazar said it did not.

The CU ban went unchallenged until December 2008, when the lawsuit was filed in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings that claimed 32 lives.

The Rocky Mountain Gun Owners Association, a gun-rights group that supports Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, is “disappointed” by CU’s decision, spokesman Ray Hickman said.

Other schools wait, watch

“It’s a complete waste of taxpayers’ funds,” he said. “The court was clearly specific on the issue with CU. . . . The judge said, ‘State law is state law,’ and CU was clearly acting outside the bounds of what it had the right to do.”

The university has until Wednesday to file its appeal, and it could take the Colorado Supreme Court a few months to decide whether to hear the case.

After the appellate court ruled against the ban, other campuses — including Colorado State University and the Colorado Community College System — reversed their bans or dropped proposed bans.

“It does seem like other universities were reacting to CU’s defeat at the court of appeals,” Manley said. “I think they’ll take a wait-and-see approach.”

Strong views on both sides

Rocky Mountain Gun Owners dropped its case against CSU after the university rescinded its proposed ban. The group will wait to see what the state Supreme Court decides before taking any action against the University of Northern Colorado, which is reviewing its policy that states weapons are prohibited “except as permitted by Colorado law.”

If the Colorado Supreme Court does decide to hear the case, the final decision wouldn’t be likely for a year, so policies on campuses are expected to remain status quo for the coming school year.

During public comments that preceded Friday’s vote, Jesse Wallace, the Libertarian candidate for CU regent, said he favors letting students protect themselves with concealed guns.

“The state law is quite clear,” he said. “The constitution is clear. The regents didn’t agree with the law, so instead, they’re trying to change it.”

Physics professor Noah Finkelstein presented a letter signed by more than 70 faculty members requesting that the regents pursue the case through the courts and maintain the campus gun ban.

“I’m concerned that lifting (the) ban on concealed weapons puts my students in jeopardy,” he said. “I’m not comfortable teaching in such an environment.”

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